“Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest!”
Source: Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays
“The mountains are fountains of men as well as of rivers, of glaciers, of fertile soil. The great poets, philosophers, prophets, able men whose thoughts and deeds have moved the world, have come down from the mountains - mountain dwellers who have grown strong there with the forest trees in Nature's workshops.”
Source: The Wilderness World of John Muir
“How hard to realize that every camp of men or beast has this glorious starry firmament for a roof! In such places standing alone on the mountain-top it is easy to realize that whatever special nests we make - leaves and moss like the marmots and birds, or tents or piled stone - we all dwell in a house of one room - the world with the firmament for its roof - and are sailing the celestial spaces without leaving any track.”
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees.”
“We are now in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us. Our flesh-and-bone tabernacle seems transparent as glass to the beauty about us, as if truly an inseparable part of it, thrilling with the air and trees, streams and rocks, in the waves of the sun,-a part of all nature, neither old nor young, sick nor well, but immortal.”
Source: John Muir: Nature Writings
“Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts; and if people in general could be got into the woods, even for once, to hear the trees speak for themselves, all difficulties in the way of forest preservation would vanish.”
Source: JOHN MUIR Ultimate Collection: Travel Memoirs, Wilderness Essays, Environmental Studies & Letters (Illustrated): Picturesque California, The Treasures of the Yosemite, Our National Parks, Steep Trails, Travels in Alaska, A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf, Save the Redwoods, The Cruise of the Corwin and more
“I never have held death in contempt, though in the course of my explorations I have oftentimes felt that to meet one's fate on a noble mountain, or in the heart of a glacier, would be blessed as compared with death from disease, or from some shabby lowland accident. But the best death, quick and crystal-pure, set so glaringly open before us, is hard enough to face, even though we feel gratefully sure that we have already had happiness enough for a dozen lives.”
Source: John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings
“Oh, these vast, calm, measureless mountain days, inciting at once to work and rest! Days in whose light everything seems equally divine, opening a thousand windows to show us God. Nevermore, however weary, should one faint by the way who gains the blessings of one mountain day; whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever.”
Source: Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays
“How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains! To behold this alone is worth the pains of any excursion a thousand times over. The highest peaks burned like islands in a sea of liquid shade. Then the lower peaks and spires caught the glow, and long lances of light, streaming through many a notch and pass, fell thick on the frozen meadows.”
Source: Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays
“I must return to the mountains-to Yosemite. I am told that the winter storms there will not be easily borne, but I am bewitched, enchanted, and tomorrow I must start for the great temple to listen to the winter songs and sermons preached and sung only there.”
Source: John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings
“But no temple made with hands can compare with Yosemite. Every rock in its walls seems to glow with life...as if into this one mountain mansion Nature had gathered her choicest treasures.”
“To lovers of the wild, these mountains are not a hundred miles away. Their spiritual power and the goodness of the sky make them near, as a circle of friends. ... You cannot feel yourself out of doors; plain, sky, and mountains ray beauty which you feel. You bathe in these spirit-beams, turning round and round, as if warming at a camp-fire. Presently you lose consciousness of your own separate existence: you blend with the landscape, and become part and parcel of nature.”
Source: Meditations of John Muir: Nature's Temple
“Doubly happy, however, is the man to whom lofty mountain tops are within reach.”
Source: JOHN MUIR’S CALIFORNIA COLLECTION: My First Summer in the Sierra, Picturesque California, The Mountains of California, The Yosemite & Our National Parks (Illustrated): Adventure Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Nature Writings and Wilderness Essays
“Fresh beauty opens one's eyes wherever it is really seen, but the very abundance and completeness of the common beauty that besets our steps prevents its being absorbed and appreciated. It is a good thing, therefore, to make short excursions now and then to the bottom of the sea among dulse and coral, or up among the clouds on mountain-tops, or in balloons, or even to creep like worms into dark holes and caverns underground, not only to learn something of what is going on in those out-of-the-way places, but to see better what the sun sees on our return to common every-day beauty.”
Source: Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays
“Hiking. I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains...the se mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them.”
“Society speaks and all men listen, mountains speak and wise men listen”
“I’d rather be in the mountains thinking of God, than in church thinking about the mountains.”
“Hiking - I don't like either the word or the thing. People ought to saunter in the mountains - not hike! Do you know the origin of that word 'saunter?' It's a beautiful word. Away back in the Middle Ages people used to go on pilgrimages to the Holy Land, and when people in the villages through which they passed asked where they were going, they would reply, "A la sainte terre,' 'To the Holy Land.' And so they became known as sainte-terre-ers or saunterers. Now these mountains are our Holy Land, and we ought to saunter through them reverently, not 'hike' through them."”
“Beside the grand history of the glaciers and their own, the mountain streams sing the history of every avalanche or earthquake and of snow, all easily recognized by the human ear, and every word evoked by the falling leaf and drinking deer, beside a thousand other facts so small and spoken by the stream in so low a voice the human ear cannot hear them.”
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
“Of all the fire mountains which like beacons, once blazed along the Pacific Coast, Mount Rainier is the noblest.”
Source: Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays
“The blessings of one mountain day, whatever his fate, long life, short life, stormy or calm, he is rich forever.”
Source: John Muir’s Incredible Travel Memoirs: A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, My First Summer in the Sierra, The Mountains of California, Travels in Alaska, Steep Trails… (Illustrated): Adventure Memoirs & Wilderness Studies from the Naturalist, Environmental Philosopher and Early Advocate of Preservation of Wilderness, the Author of The Yosemite and Picturesque California
“As age comes on, one source of enjoyment after another is closed, but Nature's sources never fail. Like a generous host, she offers her brimming cups in endless variety, served in a grand hall, the sky its ceiling, the mountains its walls, decorated with glorious paintings and enlivened with bands of music ever playing.”
Source: The American Wilderness: In the Words of John Muir
“The mountains are fountains not only of rivers and fertile soil, but of men.”
Source: JOHN MUIR’S CALIFORNIA COLLECTION: My First Summer in the Sierra, Picturesque California, The Mountains of California, The Yosemite & Our National Parks (Illustrated): Adventure Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Nature Writings and Wilderness Essays
“Wherever we go in the mountains, we find more than we seek.”
Source: John Muir’s Incredible Travel Memoirs: A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf, My First Summer in the Sierra, The Mountains of California, Travels in Alaska, Steep Trails… (Illustrated): Adventure Memoirs & Wilderness Studies from the Naturalist, Environmental Philosopher and Early Advocate of Preservation of Wilderness, the Author of The Yosemite and Picturesque California
“To myself, mountains are the beginning and the end of all natural scenery; in them, and in the forms of inferior landscape that lead to them, my affections are wholly bound up.”
“Who reports the works and ways of the clouds, those wondrous creations coming into being every day like freshly upheaved mountains?”
Source: The Wilderness World of John Muir
“Few are altogether deaf to the preaching of pine trees. Their sermons on the mountains go to our hearts . . .”
Source: JOHN MUIR Ultimate Collection: Travel Memoirs, Wilderness Essays, Environmental Studies & Letters (Illustrated): Picturesque California, The Treasures of the Yosemite, Our National Parks, Steep Trails, Travels in Alaska, A Thousand-mile Walk to the Gulf, Save the Redwoods, The Cruise of the Corwin and more
“Nature as a poet, an enthusiastic workingman, becomes more and more visible the farther and higher we go; for the mountains are fountains – beginning places, however related to sources beyond mortal ken.”
Source: JOHN MUIR’S CALIFORNIA COLLECTION: My First Summer in the Sierra, Picturesque California, The Mountains of California, The Yosemite & Our National Parks (Illustrated): Adventure Memoirs, Travel Sketches, Nature Writings and Wilderness Essays
“No words will ever describe the exquisite beauty and charm of this mountain park – Nature’s landscape garden at once tenderly beautiful and sublime. No wonder it draws nature-lovers from all over the world.”
Source: Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays
“Galen Clark was the best mountaineer I ever met, and one of the kindest and most amiable of all my mountain friends.”
Source: THE YOSEMITE COLLECTION of John Muir (Illustrated): The Yosemite, Our National Parks, Features of the Proposed Yosemite National Park, A Rival of the Yosemite, The Treasures of the Yosemite, Yosemite Glaciers, Yosemite in Winter & Yosemite in Spring
“...Good luck and Good work for the happy mountain raindrops, each one of them a high waterfall in itself, descending from the cliffs and hollows of the clouds to the cliffs and hollows of the rocks, out of the sky-thunder into the thunder of the falling rivers.”
Source: Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays
“I am well again, I came to life in the cool winds and crystal waters of the mountains.”
Source: John Muir: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth & Letters to a Friend (Autobiography With Original Drawings): The Memoirs of the Naturalist, Environmental Philosopher and Early Advocate of Preservation of Wilderness, the Author of The Yosemite, Travels in Alaska, The Mountains of California & Steep Trails
“While cares will drop off like autumn leaves.”
“What wonders lie in every mountain day!”
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
“I...am always glad to touch the living rock again and dip my hand in the high mountain air.”
“We are in the mountains and they are in us, kindling enthusiasm, making every nerve quiver, filling every pore and cell of us....How glorious a conversion, so complete and wholesome it is, scarce memory enough of old bondage days left as a standpoint to view it from! In this newness of life we seem to have been so always”
Source: John Muir, in His Own Words: A Book of Quotations
“In every country the mountains are fountains, not only of rivers but of men. Therefore we all are born mountaineers, the offspring of rock and sunshine.”
“Government protection should be thrown around every wild grove and forest on the mountains, as it is around every private orchard, and the trees in public parks. To say nothing of their value as fountains of timber, they are worth infinitely more than all the gardens and parks of towns.”
Source: John Muir, in His Own Words: A Book of Quotations
“Come to the woods, for here is rest. There is no repose like that of the green deep woods. Here grow the wallflower and the violet. The squirrel will come and sit upon your knee, the logcock will wake you in the morning. Sleep in forgetfulness of all ill. Of all the upness accessible to mortals, there is no upness comparable to the mountains.”
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
“Ink cannot tell the glow that lights me at this moment in turning to the mountains. I feel strong [enough] to leap Yosemite walls at a bound.”
“Heaven knows that John the Baptist was not more eager to get all his fellow sinners into the Jordan than I to baptize all of mine in the beauty of God's mountains.”
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
“I have a low opinion of books; they are but piles of stones set up to show coming travelers where other minds have been, or at best signal smokes to call attention. No amount of word-making will ever make a single soul to know these mountains. As well seek to warm the naked and frostbitten by lectures on caloric and pictures of flame. One day's exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books.”
Source: The Wilderness World of John Muir
“One day's exposure to mountains is better than cartloads of books. See how willingly Nature poses herself upon photographers' plates. No earthly chemicals are so sensitive as those of the human soul.”
Source: The Wilderness World of John Muir
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings.”
“Keep close to Nature's heart... and break clear away, once in awhile, and climb a mountain or spend a week in the woods. Wash your spirit clean.”
“The mountains are calling and I must go.”
Source: John Muir: His Life and Letters and Other Writings
“How glorious a greeting the sun gives the mountains!”
Source: Nature Writings: The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, My First Summer in the Sierra, the Mountains of California, Stickeen, Selected Essays
“Climb the mountains and get their good tidings. Nature's peace will flow into you as sunshine flows into trees. The winds will blow their own freshness into you, and the storms their energy, while cares will drop away from you like the leaves of Autumn.”
“Thousands of tired, nerve-shaken, over-civilized people are beginning to find out that going to the mountains is going home; that wildness is a necessity.”
“One day's exposure to mountains is better than a cartload of books.”
Source: John of the Mountains: The Unpublished Journals of John Muir
